This invention refers to a method of automatically setting the needles of needle boards of machines for the production of textile needlefelt webs, with needles of which the rear shaft end is bent by 90.degree. to form an L-shaped head, and to an apparatus for carrying out the method.
In needing technology, i.e. in the manufacture of non-woven textile webs from a wide variety of fibers, tools are used which necessarily have a very large number of needles attached to a needle board in a certain arrangement. These needle boards thus serve as needle carriers which are moved back and forth relative to the fiber fleece during the work such that the needles penetrate the fiber fleece and are withdrawn therefrom. The needles have a reinforced shaft with which they are inserted into a bore in the needle board. The fit is selected such that the needles are frictionally clamped fast in the bores. It is not at all unusual for needle boards of a needle machine to have 20,000 needles per meter of working width. There are machines with a working width of up to 6.5 meters, which means that the needle boards of such machines are equipped with up to 130,000 needles. As a result of heavy wear, the life of the needles varies according to the fibrous textile material processed; frequently, such needles must be replaced after an operative life of as little as 100 hours.
As a rule, the setting and removal of needles in the needle board is done by hand with a considerable expenditure of time and personnel. Herein, the needles are inserted individually into the bores in the needle boards and are then driven in completely with a hammer. Of course apparatus are already being used in which a compressed air activated ram with a correspondingly wide head pushes a number of needles into the bores after their insertion by hand, so that the step of driving them in with the hammer is eliminated; however, these apparatus were unable to prove themselves due to their totally insufficient degree of automation.